Adelaide Botanic Garden
botanical garden in Adelaide, South Australia
The Adelaide Botanic Garden is a 51-hectare (130-acre) public garden at the north-east corner of the Adelaide city centre, in the Adelaide Park Lands. It lies on North Terrace (between Lot Fourteen, the site of the old Royal Adelaide Hospital, and the National Wine Centre) and behind it the Botanic Park (adjacent to the Adelaide Zoo). Work was begun on the site in 1855, with its official opening to the public on 4 October 1857.
The Adelaide Botanic Garden and adjacent State Herbarium of South Australia, together with the Wittunga Botanic Garden and Mount Lofty Botanic Garden, comprise the Botanic Gardens and State Herbarium of South Australia, administered by the Board of the Botanic Gardens and State Herbarium, a state government statutory authority.
History
From the first official survey carried out for the map of Adelaide, Colonel William Light intended for the planned city to have a "botanical garden". To this end, he designated a naturally occurring ait that had formed in the course of the River Torrens, in what is now the West Parklands. However attempts to establish a garden were abandoned owing to frequent flooding of the area. After a second attempt had failed, the northern bank of the Torrens, opposite the present location of the Adelaide Zoo, was considered, and it was here in 1839 that John Bailey (1800-1864), an experienced gardener and Colonial Botanist, made a third attempt, but no funding was offered.
The South Australian Agricultural and Horticultural Society (formed 1842) and other groups continued to press for the creation of a public garden. The public were aware of the economic and scientific benefits of such a garden, already seen elsewhere in the British Empire.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Adelaide Botanic Garden” is botanical garden in Adelaide, South Australia. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Adelaide, Botanic and Garden, not as a finished interpretation.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4681683. VIAF identifies the subject as 130712772. The Library of Congress control number is n50072070. Authority coordinates are -34.917, 138.613. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1855, 1857, 1839 and 1800.
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This entry incorporates text from “Adelaide Botanic Garden” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.